A New Jersey woman paid $300 to an animal shelter to have her Doberman pinscher destroyed after it suddenly – and unexpectedly – bit her on the face and head, inflicting terrifying wounds that required 58 stitches.

But three months later, when Renee Langhaar heard on the news that a Doberman had savagely killed a 67-year-old woman who adopted him from the same Newark shelter, she knew her dog was responsible.

“And my blood just ran cold,” Langhaar says in an affidavit. “I knew what had happened.” The affidavit is part of a wrongful-dismissal suit filed by Talib Turner, an ex-employee of the Associated Humane Societies shelter.

He claims he was fired after telling law-enforcement officials and an insurance investigator that shelter officials approved the adoption of the 115-pound dog, named Luger, even though they knew of the attack on Langhaar.

The suit goes to trial in November.

The shelter denies the charges.

The 67-year-old woman, Valerie DeSwart – who loved Dobermans and had owned the breed before – bled to death in her Medford, N.J., home on Sept. 7, 2003.

Her boyfriend, Dane Corell, opened the door of their bedroom to find DeSwart lying dead on the floor with bite and claw wounds to the head, neck, face and ear.

Lying on a comforter nearby – and covered in blood – was Luger.

The dog was put down on Sept. 19.

On Sept. 24, 2003, Turner called Medford police to say he wanted to meet with DeSwart’s lawyer because “he felt that his employer was wrong in what it did,” a police report says.

“Turner stated that he had warned the shelter of the dog’s history and told them it should not be adopted,” the report says.

“He indicated that he told [shelter officials] Roseanne Trezza and Terry Clark that the dog bit its previous owner and that it was supposed to be euthanized.

He went on to say that he had been overruled and was directed to allow the adoption,” the report says.

Shortly afterward, Turner says he was fired.

His lawyer, Katherine Hartman, says the Doberman’s previous owner, Langhaar, was so concerned the dog would hurt someone that she called the shelter twice to confirm it had been destroyed and was told it had.

In Langhaar’s affidavit, she said she was lying in bed on May 30, 2003, when the dog “just flipped over and bit me and continued biting me and growling – and chewing on my head and my ear.” Langhaar said that after the Doberman bit her in the head 10 times, she fled to the bathroom, but the animal “lunged at my back and dug into my shoulder blades” and hung on.